2020-10-13 Metadata meeting notes

Oct 13, 2020 3-4pm EST

Join Zoom Meeting

https://emory.zoom.us/j/93063879737?pwd=b0FYK1NiNkgvN1hZTFhmdk9SVDJvZz09

Participants

• @Elizabeth Roke

• @Valerie Addonizio

• @Christine Di Bella

• @Kevin Schlottmann

• @Dallas Pillen

• @Jared Campbell

• @James Griffin (Unlicensed)

Minutes

• @Jared Campbell

• @James Griffin (Unlicensed)

Discussion Topics

Action Items

Minutes

• This Sub-Team shall continue to meet monthly for now

• Reviewing the Work Plan

  • Looking at the metadata standards list

  • Where we are committed to maintaining mappings

  • That lives in last year’s workplan, should this be moved?

  • This addresses the level of support for ArchivesSpace for Import/Export

  • Tiers of Support

    • Standards in first tier: EAD2002, DACS

    • Second Tier: Dublin Core, EAC-CPF, OAI

  • Difference between optimal and compliant support?

    • From last year, the first tier would be that we go as far as possible with near-optimal support

    • For MARC this is impossible, as it is complex and doesn’t map to the ASpace data model

    • Objective is to provide a mechanism for getting standards-compliant records out of the system

  • What comes out of ArchivesSpace will be valid, but there might still need to be some transformation to account for additional data elements

• Tickets and Enhancement Requests

  • This sub-team guides this on behalf of the community

  • Christine DiBella is aware of this

  • The Sub-Group took this upon themselves

• Regarding the list of existing mappings

  • Does anything need to be moved?

  • Does anything need to be added?

  • EAC-CPF work: Kevin notes that this requires some additional updates regarding the encoding and support for agents

  • Additional Mappings

    • Elizabeth is aware that Schema.org and other mappings were added to the code base, but this has not been documented for the public

• Where do we find these mappings published on the WWW?

  • There isn’t an explicit mapping for some of these

  • In ArchivesSpace itself, it was implemented by Mark Custer

  • Christine will be looking to identify this

  • Elizabeth will add this to the list

• Moving EAC-CPF up a tier?

  • We’re not finished with EAD and MARC yet

• Have we done a standard survey to see what users are getting in exports and imports? This might be an interesting step to take

  • There was data from the EAS survey, and Dallas is aware of those who have access to the data

  • Not many in the community were using EAC-CPF, but there were definitely interested parties

• Placement of the documentation

  • Should this be published elsewhere? Where might it need to go?

  • It might be best to explore using another space, such as https://archivesspace.github.io/archivesspace/user/migration-tools-and-data-mapping

  • Request for an update for phrasing

  • Community members have the ability to issue a pull request against the GitHub repository

  • There is another URL for this information: https://archivesspace.org/using-archivesspace/migration-tools-and-data-mapping

• ArchivesSpace 3.0

  • Timeline and where this sub-team can assist with supporting the release

  • There is going to be a minor release before 3.0 addressing Agent exports

  • On the GitHub repository, please monitor active Pull Requests

  • 2.8.1 is the next scheduled release

  • If there are mappings which are maintained (e. g. for EAD), these can be noted in the comments on the pull request

    • Is it helpful to have a workflow in which we monitor pull requests?

  • For ArchivesSpace 3.0, the hope is to work towards more version-based approach for maintaining the maps

    • There also exists a test server: http://aspace-anw-429.lyrtech.org/staff/

  • The mappings have never been fully versioned in git, and these have consistently been instead maintained in Spreadsheet

    • If they were in git, could we tie in changes in the mappings with the changes in the codebase which prompted these changes?

    • Christine: Uncertain, but this may be possible

    • Valerie: Git also provides us with the ability to tag changes and track changes at a more granular level

    • Kevin: Might it be possible to integrate this using the code-documentation as well?

      • This could greatly simplify the workload involved in manually maintaining the documentation

    • ArchivesSpace Data Dictionary

      • https://desolate-tundra-60608.herokuapp.com

      • GitHub - archivesspace/data-dictionary-initial: Rails app for ArchivesSpace data dictionary

      • It should be noted this is quite out of date

      • This should probably be generated directly from the code in the future

    • Action Item: Investigate autogenerating documentation first

      • This can be further extended from the basics at a later date

      • Perhaps half of a meeting could be spent looking at the code

    • Yard Gem

      • This is a Ruby Gem used to automatically generate documentation in HTML/CSS from code comments

      • https://archivesspace.github.io/archivesspace/doc is generated using this

      • It should remain important that we ensure that this is user-friendly for non-developers

• Research undertaken by this group could help identify which barriers might be in place for onboarding non-developers into understanding the code base

• Meeting adjourned at 15:58 EDT